Avatar the Last Airbender: Genderbent
by Omegoid
Summary: Follow the whacky adventures of the Gaang and extras, but this time... Genderbent! All major characters are been switched to the opposite sex, and with it creating new dynamics, adventures, interactions, and character growths. Rated T just in case.


Chapter 1:

She was a killer, a thing that preyed, living on the things that lived, unaided, alone, by virtue of her own strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in a hostile environment where only the strong survive.

She was Soka. And she was about to catch a fat, juicy leopard fish.

Slowly, as to not startle her prey, she raised her whale bone spear above her head, keeping the point fixed on the fish's speckled form that lazily circled in the frigid waters.

"Soka," hissed a voice from the distant corners of her mind. But the voice would have better luck talking to a pile of snow; in this state of intense concentration, there was nothing in the world but Soka and the leopard fish. The hunter and the hunted. The predator and the prey.

But the voice was persistent. "_Soka_," the voice said again, this time with a distinct note of urgency fluttering its cadence.

Meanwhile, the leopard fish was drifting closer to the seal skin boat until it was very nearly within striking range. Seconds ticked by, one by one, then five by five, then ten by ten. Soka tilted back in her crouched position, readying to send the spear hurtling in the water to pierce the fatty flesh of the fish that drifted closer, and closer still. Any second now… and… DINNER IS SER –

_Sploosh_!

A bucket of icy cold water that came from science-knows-where fell down on Soka, effectively drenching her from warrior's wolf tail to her toes in her seal-skin boots. The Southern Water tribeswoman whirled around in her seat to find her parker-swathed younger brother with a guilty look on his face.

"Katok!" she shrieked indignantly at him. "What the heck!?"

"Hey, I was just catching a fish!" Katok defended hotly, standing up in his seat as to better focus on his sister.

Soka blinked once, then twice, then considered her fishless surroundings. She finally settled with a put-upon huff and a pointed look in her brother's direction.

Katok had the decency to look sheepish, rubbing a hand on the back of his head which caused his hair-loops to sway. "Yeah, well, I was using my water bending to catch it… and I would have had it if you had just turned around and helped me."

The icy water had penetrated Soka's parker by now, causing her to shiver. "Why is it," she ground out between chattering teeth, "that whenever you do your stupid weird magic thing, I'm the one getting drenched!"

He was so annoying! And the worse thing about having been drenched in the South Pole wasn't that she could freeze to death or become gravely ill. That was all outweighed by the fact that _he got her hair wet_. Her warrior's wolf tail: The sign of a warrior… Just… _reduced_ to a gross slip of wet hair hanging on the back of her half-shaved head. It was sad.

As if trying to purposefully further raise Soka's ire, Katok sighed and rolled his blue eyes, even going so far as to mirror Soka's exasperated posture. "It's called _waterbending_, dummy, and it's _not_ weird."

Soka was about to retort what wasn't weird about controlling water with your mind when suddenly the boat jerked beneath them. Katok almost tumbled out of boat, but Soka managed to catch the little nuisance by his shoulder-length hair and pull him back in next to her. Once he was securely settled with his butt in his seat instead of standing in his classic high-and-mighty-and-I-will-argue-you-to-death stance, Soka glanced over the rim of the boat.

What she saw was _not_ good. A freak current was sending them careening straight towards a treacherous mess of flat ice chunks and round ice chunks and spiky ice chunks that were more than capable of crushing them six ways to solstice.

Instinct taking over, Soka leapt back into the seat and grabbed an oar, closely followed by Katok. "Look alive, warriors!" Soka barked, the favourite phrase of their mother, the chief of the Southern Water tribe who was currently fighting the fire nation, rolling off her tongue as naturally as if she had been commanding a fleet for years. "It's going to be a bumpy ride!"

With much paddling and cursing, Soka navigated them through the treacherous rapids, singlehandedly dodging icebergs with a swift dip of her oar and a shifting of her weight.

But the trouble wasn't over yet. Soka's fantastic choice of direction was leading them straight to a churning cauldron of ice chunks that would most certainly put the 'dead' and 'end' into 'dead end'.

"Left!" Katok cried unhelpfully behind her. "Turn left!"

You see, the instruction was unhelpful because if Soka turned left, she would also be turning straight to another collision that would be as lethal as the current trajectory. The siblings had only one choice, and that choice would have to be put into action in a few short seconds if they were ever going to make it out of this alive.

Soka dropped her oar, turned around to grab hold of Katok's hand, shouted "Jump!", and launched them both out of the boat, hearing the chilling crunch of wood behind them that well and truly could have been their bones as they tumbled across the snowy top of their ice chunk.

Soka had barely finished rolling before Katok began to yell at her.

"Are you deaf? I said to go left!" he shrieked. His hair was messy and full of snow, his eyes bright and feverish with adrenaline. Soka, not in the mood to be yelled at so soon after a near-death experience, and _especially_ not by her annoying little brother, simply scowled and said "There was no time. And we couldn't have turned fast enough anyway".

Soka's logic apparently did not penetrate Katok's thick skull, as he only continued to shout at his Older Sister. "Yes, we could have!" He insisted. "You just don't know how to paddle properly."

"Well, if you don't like my paddling, why didn't you use your _waterbending, _then?"

"I could have if you had just listened to me!"

"If I had listened to you, we would have been twice as crushed as we are now."

"No we wouldn't have!"

"Yes we would."

"No, we wouldn't".

Soka sighed. This argument was clearly beginning to circle. So, she hauled herself to her feet, grunting all the while. She tested her shoulder that had taken the brunt of the impact and winced. That was going to leave a mark.

"Quit your yakking," she tossed out, and Katok's face visibly darkened at the blatant dismissal, "So I can find a way out of this mess that you got us into." Preferably they would find a way to be back in a few hours so they could have something to eat.

Katok opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. Soka by now had turned around and was surveying the river while running her gloved hand through her hair that was still wet from Katok's earlier antics, ensuring sure that the beads that were threaded into the cord were still intact. For this reason, she didn't see Katok's face flush a shade darker with anger.

"_My_ fault?" Katok managed to get out, his voice hilariously jumping an octave from the intensity of his emotions. "How is any of this _my_ fault? _You're_ the one who was in charge of navigation and you lead us straight into the rapids and ruined our boat!"

Soka groaned and turned to face him. If there was an award for being the most annoying, obtuse person in the whole South Pole and Whatever Else is Out There, her younger brother would win by an avalanche. "Well, _maybe_ I would have navigated better if you weren't crying like a newborn seal-turtle pup the whole time."

Katok was about to respond to that, and quite hotly too, by the look of it, but Soka cut him off with an interpretation that vaguely resembled a baby seal-turtle pup.

He tried again, but Soka beat him to it once more.

And again, but to no avail.

By now, Katok's young face was contorted into a fierce scowl that made his nose scrunch up like an artic feather-fox pup, his fists clenched and shaking, and his eyes welling over with frustrated tears.

"You thick as blubber, bossy – mean – _rude_ – " Katok choked on his words as if he were so mad he couldn't even finish his insult. Soka just rolled her eyes – she's done a lot of eye-rolling today, but she couldn't help it this time as the little nuisance had obviously decided that this exact moment in time was the perfect opportunity to have a meltdown – and began to tie the lace of her right boot which she had noticed was undone while Katok continued to squall like the aforementioned seal-turtle pup.

"I'm embarrassed to be related to you!" he managed to finish. But Soka didn't it hear over the sound of splashing water. Her ears pricked. Huh, that was strange.

Curiosity piqued, she looked around Katok's flailing form to see that the water was rising and falling in synchronization with Katok's outraged hand movements.

That was also strange. And also, not good. "Uh, Katok…" Soka began, but he was not hearing it.

"Ever since dad died, I've been doing all the work around camp while you've been off playing _soldier_!" The outburst was punctuated with a slice of his right hand which sent a tremor rolling out into the water behind him, and, more pressingly, it sent a giant crack into the massive, 10 spear-tall iceberg that loomed behind him.

"Katok," she tried again, backing away from him and the colossal iceberg.

"You've left all the chores to me! I've had to baby sit all the kids in our tribe for three days straight. Do you know how much crying and puke there was!? A–_Lot._ " Another forceful arm movement, causing the crack in the ice to snake further, and there was an ominous creak that could not have meant anything else but imminent doom.

"Katok! Settle down!" Soka shrieked, waving her arms as madly as he was in her panic.

"NO!" he shouted. "I'm _done_ listening to you. From now on, _you're on your own_!" And with that, he threw his arms out, sending a powerful surge of energy that made the whole iceberg shake.

A deafening crack resonated in the air, and of course her little brother decides to listen _now_, because he promptly spun around to face the source of the noise. Seeing the noise came from the iceberg behind him literally _splitting into two_ and oh boy that falling ice was either going to crush them or send a wave that would knock them in the freezing water and oh boy they really should really be holding onto something solid by now, Katok backed away.

"Oh, sh –".

Soka didn't let him finish the completely situation appropriate comment as she tackled him to the ground, so that the wave rolling towards him wouldn't knock him over into the frigid water. Despite the bite of snow into the exposed skin of her face, she hung on to their ice chunk and her brother for dear life.

As it turned out, they weren't knocked off into the water, but rather sent adrift. When she felt their make-do boat still, Soka peaked up, took in her surroundings, then, once the adrenaline wore off, she spoke.

"Seal-turtle pup," she scoffed, and Katok had the nerve to scowl. "You just had to break the iceberg, didn't you?"

Katok's scowl was then replaced by bewilderment. "You mean," he said, and he sounded much too happy in this whole situation, "_I_ did that?" Soka was going to roll her eyes again at how pleased he looked, when the water around them began to glow.

And yep, you heard it correctly. _Glow_.

And by glow, it meant that the water around them as far as they could see was filled with an intense blue light that was so strong Soka had to squeeze her eyes shut lest she be blinded. She only opened them when she heard the thunderous splashing of water, and she had time to think _no_ _not again_, before she saw a giant blue ball of ice emerge from the surface like a shark-whale breaking the surface to take a breath of fresh air.

But the strangest thing wasn't the freak-appearance of the iceberg, and nor was it even the odd glowing light, which filled the strange, circular object like a glass ball with seawater in it. No, the strangest thing was that there was something, or rather, _someone_, inside the iceberg, with two glowing eyes that regarded Soka as if they were staring – excuse the sentimentality – straight into the darkest depths of her black pessimist soul.

Soka turned to face her younger brother beside her. Their eyes met, and his face was white as her own.

"What. The. Heck," was all Soka could say, her usual agile mind apparently numbed by the glowing blue light.

Then, to Soka's ever-increasing incredulity, Katok leapt to his feet and dashed towards the strange, creepy, magical, and probably dangerous glowing iceberg that may or may not have someone in it.

"What the heck!" was really all Soka could say to that, too.


End file.
